Historian brings Freedom Summer killer to justice

Historian Dr. David Oshinsky spoke at the Taylorsville Redwood Campus on March 7, 2012 about civil rights and his role in bringing a killer to justice.

In the summer of 1964, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney went down to Mississippi to get African Americans registered to vote. Oshinsky, at Cornell at the time, had an opportunity to participate in Freedom Summer. He didn’t take it.​“I just did not have the guts to spend the summer in the midst of that terror,” says Oshinsky, “so I didn’t go.”

When the records became public in the 1980s, Oshinsky took his son and a photographer for the “New York Times” to Mississippi to find out what happened to Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney.

“It was a state that was coming to grips with its racial past,” says Oshinsky.​Looking through the paperwork, it was apparent that Edgar Ray Killen was a “key figure in the killing of the three students.”

Killen invited Oshinsky to dinner at Killen’s farm. During the evening, Killen never admitted to the murder of the three, but he alluded to it.

“He was playing with me,” says Oshinsky. “He felt like he was bulletproof.”

Edgar Ray Killen was later tried and sentenced for manslaughter of the three men.

“Life does provide second chances. I didn’t have the courage to do what I should have done in 1964,” says Oshinsky. “Grab the opportunity when you can, particularly if it’s a moral issue. That’s what life’s about.”​This article was first published at examiner.com.